Host burnout: 5 signs that you are burning out

You have been a short term rental host for a while and the first flush of excitement of a new business venture has faded and now you are feeling a bit of host burnout. You have been running around trying to meet everybody’s needs, whims and desires and you are starting to feel listless and demotivated. There are a ton of boring little jobs and tasks that need to be done, taxes need to be paid, you are getting the same questions over and over again, you are slow to get going in the morning. 

Does it feel like you are suffering the Torture of Sisyphus? Constantly rolling a ball up a hill, only to have it continue to roll back to the start again? You might be on the verge of host burnout – or perhaps you are already there. 

Here are some of the signs that you might be facing burnout.

1. You start to resent guests. 

Does this sound familiar?

• If one more person asks me how to get in from the airport I might scream! 
• Why don’t the guests read the welcome pack? 
• The instructions for the washing machine are in the book! Why am I always explaining the same information over and over? 

If this is you, then you are in danger of letting your hospitality standards slip. Without realizing, you start to resent guests who don’t read everything you have prepared for them. Your tone will become short with guests and they will start to feel that you are resenting them personally. 

(Spolier alert: Lots of guests will not read everything so you will frequently hear the same questions. This is part of the job of the Short Term Rental host. So you had better get used to it or have some strategies to deal with it – see below for some strategies. )

The goal is to treat each and every guest with the same standard of exceptional hospitality. But if you are not feeling this and feeling burnout, it is very hard to fake it.

2. You put off answering guest emails

If you start your day resenting your email inbox or you avoid this until you get a reminder that you haven’t answered a customer request, this can have detrimental effects on your business. 

Airbnb and VRBO will penalize your host rating if you don’t answer all new inquiries within 24 hours. You could lose your Superhost status which will really affect how your property is displayed in a search. Or an inquiry that could have been an awesome new booking has gone cold. Maybe the guest has moved onto a host that answers messages promptly. (If you haven’t already check out my FREE guest communications course with templates)

So avoiding guest communications affects your future business and can mean loss of real money. It is hard to calculate exactly how much this might be, but why risk any financial loss that can be avoided? 

3. Your cleaning and maintenance standards slip

If you are doing your own cleaning and maintenance and you are burning out, then you may overlook or put off cleaning and maintenance issues. Maybe your dishes have some chips in them or you overlook the dust bunnies under the bed. Perhaps your lawn needs trimming or the house is showing some wear and tear. 

Short term rentals is hard on a property. Dishes do get chipped, wallpaper gets marked, grime does build up if you are doing a fast turnover between guests. You stop noticing these little things as you see them regularly. 

If it appears that you are not taking good care of your property, then this gives tacit permission to guests to do the same. Why should a guest take great care if it appears that the host isn’t?

Again, this will lead to less than stellar reviews. Plus more maintenance issues by guests not being as careful as they would be with a pristine environment. 

4. Your guest reviews start to mention that you are not warm and welcoming

In the past, all of your reviews were glowing with 5 stars across the board. The written comments from guests gushing about your service and hospitality. But if you are worn out and jaded, you are not being your best host self. Guests will feel this. You can’t fake authenticity and exceptional hospitality. So guests will start to voice their dissatisfaction with their experiences with you and your property. 

Success in the sharing economy is built on great reviews. This is more than the number of stars a guest leaves you but also the comments. If a guest (especially if this is your ideal guest) has said in a review that you lack warmth and attention to their needs, then this will speak volumes to potential new bookings. You will find it more difficult to attract your ideal guest if past guests haven’t felt valued and welcome.

If your standards slip, then you are again in danger of losing Superhost status. Your listing will get lost in the noise of other mediocre listings and hosts and this means fewer bookings. You might then need to discount to fill up your calendar. We all know the pitfalls of discounting to get guests…. This is a slippery slope. You start to attract less than ideal guests who create problems of their own. 

5. You start to create excessive rules

Not all guests are perfect and some can be downright muppets. These disappointing guests drain your energy, give you headaches and add to your work-load leading to more burnout.

So for each problem that you experience, you create a new rule. Or put more and more signs around the house nagging people to take out the trash or wash their dishes under threat of punitive consequences. Or you start micromanaging guests and nit picking before they have even crossed your threshold. 

This will start off the relationship with your guest on a bad note and often it will go down-hill from there. A guest that might have been totally wonderful and polite, suddenly feels under pressure and not very welcome. You are not going to have a guest behave well by treating them with suspicion from the start. Put yourself in their place – how would you feel if your host made a ton of assumptions about bad behavior that wasn’t even you or in your normal behavior patterns anyway. 

If you look at your business rationally and if you have created your business with your hosting style and your ideal guest in mind, the true percentage of problem guests is quite small. But it is these guests that take up so much of our energy and concern.

Humans are funny creatures and they put more attention to the possible dangers of life. This is an evolutionary phenomenon as dangers to a caveman could mean life or death. But in modern times, dangers don’t often have such dire outcomes but we still have this inbuilt protection system. 

So while your instinct might be to protect your business with stricter and stricter rules, you are in fact causing long term damage to your business. In turn you are erroding the way you view guests and your eagerness to be hospitable. 

Working in hospitality means that you are always working with people. These are people who are seemingly always on holidays while you seem to be always working and taking care of their needs. 

Some guests are amazing and are appreciative and give as much love back to you as you give them. But over the weeks and months, it does become a grind if you don’t have some systems in place to protect yourself from burnout. 

Some solutions for burnout

Take some time off: It is impossible to keep working day in and day out without a break. Plan regular holidays and take them with your family or by yourself. Let somebody else take care of you for a change. 

Set your own timetable and stick to it: Give yourself some work-life balance throughout the working week. Make sure you are taking some time to feed your soul that is not related to your hospitality. This could be a hobby, spending time doing puzzles with your kids or as simple as going for a walk – or as I call them a “soul stroll”. 

Prepare a communications cheat sheet: Sit down and write out responses as your best self so that you can copy and paste replies to commonly asked questions. If you want more on this, I have created a free MiniCourse with a spreadsheet and an airtable to help with this. This means that you can quickly copy and paste replies and you can always be your best host self even when you are busy or not feeling friendly. 

Outsource: Ask yourself which unfulfilling tasks can be outsourced or automated. The costs are often less than you would imagine.

Turn off the notifications: If you are triggered by the constant ding on your phone – turn it off if you can. You need to make sure your business is covered and that if there are real emergencies, they will be attended to quickly. For me personally, I love hearing that notifiction as it means I have a potential booking. But I do turn this off at night as often the inquiries come in when I am sleeping. 

Spend time on the tasks that light you up: If you love to renovate or redecorate, plan a project that brings you joy. Perhaps it is just as simple replacing some tired soft furnishings, moving around furniture or up-cycling some older furniture that is showing some wear and tear. 

Big picture planning: take some time each month to work “on your business” and not just “in your business”. This is super important as it gives you a birds eye view of your goals and dreams and reminds you of your long term goals. 

Set up smart boundaries: Decide in advance what you will and will not offer. Write this as a policy so you and your team know what the boundaries are. Of course, there does need to be some flexibility built into the system. However, without some boundaries, you are in danger of running around with every small request. I call this the People Pleaser Danger zone. I will write about this in the future.

Charge for extras: For extra services such as extra towels or airport pickups, prepare a price list of what you can offer. So when you get a question, you have an immediate response. This sends the message that you are antipating guests’ needs but that you are not at their beck and call. When people are paying for additional services, you know they are treating you and your time with respect. This means you are also valuing your own time and you have more self respect. Obviously you don’t want to be nickle-and-diming each tiny little thing so use some good jugement on what goes on your pricelist.

Revisit your ideal guest avatar: Look at your listing copy and make sure you are signaling to these people. Remember who you are serving and how much these people appreciate you and your product. 

Be Selective: Don’t accept guests who give you vibes of not being your ideal guest because it will contribute more to the burnout as they will not be brining you joy. 

Remember the great guests: Read through your guest reviews and guestbook to remind you of how great your service has been appreciated in the past. 

Remind yourself of why you got into the business from the beginning. It is more than just a paycheck, it is a lifestyle. Bringing your best self to each and every guest takes some planning and some work. However, the benefits – both financial and personal – are priceless which is why avoiding burnout is important.